11th Powerboat meeting Heilbronn, Germany July 4-8th 2007
For 11 years now Heilbronn in Germany is
the place to go for a very special powerboat meeting. The local club, the “MSCEurope is quite big and many guys from Holland, France and
Germany came together to celebrate our hobby. The
party started Wednesday where
most of the people arrived, placed their tents and caravans and started to look
for the friends they only see a couple of days a year. Every evening the club
bar was open and Chris, our bartender, mixed cocktails which surely would have
burned if one had lighted them. All was organised very well, food, drinks,
restrooms...everything, so we could feel like home. Hansa Heilbronn” organized this
meeting the first weekend of July and more than 200 people joined it. The
powerboat scene in Europe is quite big and many guys from Holland, France and
Germany came together to celebrate our hobby. The party started Wednesday where
most of the people arrived, placed their tents and caravans and started to look
for the friends they only see a couple of days a year. Every evening the club
bar was open and Chris, our bartender, mixed cocktails which surely would have
burned if one had lighted them. All was organised very well, food, drinks,
restrooms...everything, so we could feel like home.
Also the quality of the boats here in Europe is quite high. Beside the
world wide known AC Lazer and AC Rebel and
Blastcats there are meanwhile a lot
of 1:6 Scale Class one Cats. 12 of them showed up at Heilbronn
with different setups. As standard one uses 2 coupled twin Zenoah while other,
like the famous Victory 4 from Curt Conrad, run on twin 30ccm MHZ Engines. Also
the electric fraction is on the way with these boats. Jörg Marschall runs 2
Lehner 3080 on 120 cells with around 85MPH. 5 of these cats gathered
to run a show race with all the different setups on the water...what a show,
and what a great event...all the different guys (Nitros, gas and Electric) in
harmony on the water.
All different kinds of boats were on the water,
Riggers, cats, monos even a scale Riva with real V8 4 stroke engine showed up.
A few guys here are building true scale hydroplanes with real turbines and this
year the Hydroplane Competition Team around Chris Tonn and Christoph Metzger
presented a XXX Mono from MHZ with Jet Cat Turbine. Even with reduced force (electronically
by around 30%) this boat showed a speed and a sound which was gorgeous.
The main event surely was the “FAT ASS RACE”. 13 people from the German
forum www.rcpowerboatforum.de
decided to go back to the roots and put a little gas engine in a too big hull.
The Race outlines where defined as follows: Hull: MHZ
“No Mercy”,
Engine: Gas, not bigger than 26ccm. The races themselves on Saturday and Sunday
where just for fun, no real hard fight but quite spectacular. Those boats are really
fast (around 45-50MPH) and hard to control because of the weight. Some people trimmed them
with Water bottles for a better performance. It’s really hard to keep them keel
down on choppy water, so the crew of the rescue boat had a lot of work...and last
but not least a really hard impact...but the model was o.k., only the dinghy
had to be fixed with duct tape.
The weekend was absolutely great and this kind of meeting, besides Nuenen in Holland seems to unique worldwide. All different kinds of Model Boaters have a great fest over 4 days without any problems or differences between the fans of e.g. electrics and gas.
Pictures say more than a thousand words. Enjoy them and if you ever come to visit Germany, be sure to do it in July and give us a visit.
